Why does the universe exist and why should I care? What is so important about thinking about how we and the universe came about? “Why is there something instead of nothing? In other words: Why does the universe exist (and why are we in it)?

"Constructing Worlds" is the first major exhibition in London exploring the relationship between architecture and photography and as Jane Alison, Head of Visual Arts at the Barbican, remarks, "it is a must see for anyone interested in how we understand architecture and equally the dramatic shifts in society in the post-war period."

I have just returned from attending the Transvision 2014 (TV14) conference in Paris, co-hosted by AFT (L’Association Française Transhumaniste) Technoprog!, fiXience, & Traces (ESPCI ParisTech), at the Espace des Sciences Pierre-Gilles de Gennes. I found this to be a particularly successful, interesting, and invigorating conference. The meeting’s theme was “Transhumanism Faces the Social Question”, which is of course a collision of worlds very much at the heart of the Social Futurist worldview.

Self-awareness is the most crucial developmental breakthrough for accelerating personal leadership growth and authenticity. Learning to pause to build self-awareness is an evolving process critical to leader success.

It is extremely valuable to know ourselves in order to leverage our potentialities:

We need to know our strengths to assert them in the appropriate circumstances;We need to know our vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and distressing emotions, to check them and to prevent asserting them inappropriately and in non-value creating ways;When we are not self-aware, people around us have a better sense of our strengths and weaknesses than we do, and we lose credibility;When we are self-aware, we are more in touch with reality; people trust and respect us more.